Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The Chorus

"The Chorus", an Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film 2004. It's a French story of a musician (Clement Mathieu) whose brilliant career has never materialized. He takes a job as a new supervisor at a reform school, where he turns a bunch of young hoodlums into a beautiful chorale group, saving more than one child's life in the process. Actually when he just arrived the reform school, he felt uneasy with the school's mantra of 'Action-Reaction'. This is because the principal, Rachet always punished students who made mistakes by locked them into a room which is very dark, without provide them food and drink or even a blanket. When one of the students make naughty and refused to admit his mistake, Rachet will held an assembly and asked all the student, "Who did this?" If there is still no one answered his question, then he will randomly pick a student out to be locked into the dark room by himself or other teacher. The purpose for the principal done these is want the students obey the rule and never do the mistake again. But these punishment just create more disobedient cases and no longer effective.

Therefore the school's mantra of 'Action-Reaction' faces something of a challenge with the arrival of Clement Mathieu. Rather than adhering to the system of rigorous discipline that the assortment of troubled kids have become accustomed to, Mathieu instead prefers to try and understand their problems and inspire them through his love of music. At first the kids are wary, but it's not too long before he's won their respect by binding them together in a school choir. By forming a choir, the boys finds a togetherness that they never thought they would ever have, and Clement Mathieu discover that the power of music can sooth even the most disruptive influence.

However, some of the boys in the choir didn't get as much development or backstory as they should do. This lead to me that not been involved with the entire choir as mush as you should be, as you really don't know much about them. Anyway, the boys need inspiration, Clement Mathieu needs to connect with music again, and so that it is a happy ending.

Besides of that, I think we must not laugh at everyone else's dream. For example, Pepinot, an orphan who refuses to belief that his father is dead and waits by the school gate every Saturday on visiting day. He firmly believe that his father will comes and pick him on Saturday.
Some of the teacher and student might think that, "What a silly dream Pepinot have?" But who know? Finally, Pepinot leave the reform school on Saturday with Clement Mathieu.

This is my first time watching a French movie completely and this is my first time watching a movie during the class. I enjoyed the movie and found that it is very touching. After I watched, I was wondering that would real boys in a reform school, many of them well into adolescence, be quite so be obliging? Wouldn't at least one of them refuse to participate, if only on the grounds that it threatened his manhood?

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